[E&E seminars] MIT Seminar on Environmental and Agricultural History, FRIDAY, April 29, 2011

[Margo Collett]

MIT Seminar on Environmental and Agricultural History



“Betting the Future: Population Growth and Resource Scarcity Debates in the 1970s”

Paul Sabin, Yale University



In 1980, Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich, famous for his 1968 book The Population Bomb, made a notorious bet over mineral prices with University of Illinois economist Julian Simon.  The wager served as a proxy for their competing visions of the future. Ehrlich argued that overpopulation would cause overconsumption, scarcity, and famine.  Simon countered that flexible markets and new technologies would allow societies to adapt and improve human welfare.  Sabin will interpret this confrontation in the context of the environmental battles of the 1970s.  His examination of the relationship between modern environmentalism and broader political conflicts, including the 1980 contest between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, contributes to an ongoing historical reassessment of the 1970s.

 

Friday, April 29, 2011

2:30 to 4:30 pm

Building E51 Room 095

Corner of Wadsworth and Amherst Streets, Cambridge


Sponsored by MIT’s History Faculty and the Program in Science, Technology, and Society.  For more information or to be put on the mailing list contact mcollett at mit.edu.
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